U.S. digital ad spending has been growing at a double-digit rate for years. However, with the COVID-19 crisis, that has changed. According to our recent advertising forecast, we expect a 1.7% increase in U.S. digital ad investment this year to $132.4 billion.

The most resilient digital formats will be online video, expected to grow +11%, as well as social media formats (+5). These growth rates still represent a significant slowdown compared to the double-digit growth rates of previous years, and the dollar stability reflects the fact that digital ad formats continue to gain market share during this recession.

Search revenues will decline this year by 2.7%, mainly due to COVID-19’s impact on industries that spend heavily on search like the travel & hospitality industries.

Moving forward, we expect the advertising market to rebound in 2021, and stabilize to normal growth levels in 2022. We project the U.S. advertising market to be $314 billion in 2024, with digital advertising accounting for 70% of the total market.

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